The war on motorists is far from over

Few things impact on our lives more than the car. It is our friend, our refuge, almost our starship. So when Philip Hammond, the newly appointed coalition transport secretary, declared that ‘the war on motorists is over’ we all heaved a collective sigh of relief. Here, at last, was recognition of what the car meant to us.

For years we motorists had felt ourselves a beleaguered section of society: milked for all we were worth; told that we were anti-social for not using public transport; told we were a menace to life and limb; and told also that we were polluters of the planet. Never once did the-powers-that-be recognise what the car meant to the public and how we found them such a marvellous means of conveyance – and how we valued that it kept so many of us in work. So twenty months into this government, we are entitled to ask of the evidence that it intends to make good on its welcomed promise of a cessation of hostilities.

Motoring back from my Burns Night supper near Lincoln this weekend, I was struck by the number of newly installed average speed cameras: dozens and dozens of them. We were told that the whole matter of cameras and much else besides was going to be looked at, and that they were going to be confined to genuine accident blackspots – as was their original intention.

Nothing discredits a government more than broken promises. They do, after all, form the basis on which our elected politicians got their jobs in the first place, so it is little different from lying in a job interview.

Almost immediately on my arrival back in Plymouth I learned that Hush Puppy-booted Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, is to raise spot motoring fines by 66% to £100. What a kick in the teeth that represents. And what a duplicitous example of government two-timing its electors. What’s more, it demonstrates a total disregard for the financial pain people are suffering right now and only provides further evidence of how utterly out of touch with reality the political elite really are.

We deserve better than this. As I have said before in this blog, our motorists are among the most considerate in the world and our death rate reflects this fact. But here in Plymouth I continue to feel quiet fury at the way the transport authorities behave.

Take the Cattedown roundabout East End Development as an example. Long drawn-out and hugely over-budget, it has recently been completed. They have, however, built a superb slip road bypassing the Embankment shopping thoroughfare. It is smooth and congestion-free, without a single house flanking it, nor cross road or pedestrian crossing. Yet it is not fast. Absurdly, they have applied a thirty-mile speed limit and, just in case you are inclined to ignore this piece of nonsense and travel at forty, they have installed average speed cameras.

In the approach to this development coming from the city centre along Exeter Street, there was a road which allowed motorists to safely escape a hundred yards of nose to tail traffic leading up to Cattedown roundabout. Motorists have been taking this exit for years to no ill effect, but with the great benefit that it reduces the tailback of traffic leading to the roundabout. Now they are suddenly banned from this because it has been made one way.

How many streets, I ask myself, across the city have suffered a similar fate? Were the people who live in these streets asked for their thoughts on the matter? Were there accidents or fatalities that forced the planners into action?

I have spoken to people living in the street mentioned above, and they are furious that they cannot enter it any more from both directions. Yet all over the city things have been done to the annoyance of the people who have to suffer the inconvenience. And why? Because some pencil-pushing jobsworth thinks it’s a good idea, I imagine.

It was once possible to save time and relieve traffic on the busy Plymouth Road by passing through the Woodford estate. But now vast numbers of road bumps – which are exceedingly difficult to be taken properly and are often taken dangerously because of parked cars – make this route a nightmare. Again, locals say their views counted for nothing. It was imposed on them from on high – from our masters who know best.

I can only suppose that all over the city, and indeed all over the land, you would hear similar stories of ‘solutions’ foisted on communities with neither proper consideration of their feelings nor proper consultation with them. After all, they are the ones having to live on a daily basis with these foolish, not to say costly, changes. And when mistakes are plain for all to see there is invariably an arrogant refusal on their part to acknowledge them as such, much less to make restitution.

Far away in their ivory towers they hold to the view that the man in the town hall knows best.

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About tomhmackenzie

Born Derek James Craig in 1939, I was stripped of my identity and renamed Thomas Humphreys in the Foundling Hospital's last intake of illegitimate children.
After leaving the hospital at 15, I managed to find work in a Fleet Street press agency before being called up for National Service with the 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars who were, at that time, engaged with the IRA in Northern Ireland. Following my spell in the Army, I sought out and located my biological parents at age 20. I then became Thomas Humphrey Mackenzie and formed the closest of relationships with my parents for the rest of their lives. All this formed the basis of my book, The Last Foundling (Pan Macmillan), which went on to become an international best seller.